Cardinal Bagnasco says Europe marginalizes Christians out of fear

“Today Christians are martyrs,” the president of the Italian bishops’ conference said on August 10.

Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco of Genoa, celebrating Mass in the cathedral of St. Lawrence on the martyr’s feast day, said in his homily that for today’s Christians, martyrdom comes in different forms. There is bloody martyrdom, he said, but there is also a quiet persecution that is “refined, but no less cruel; legalized, but no less unjust.”

In Europe, the cardinal continued, a secular world seeks to marginalize Christians, in order to create a “world order without God.” That effort is doomed, he said, because although Christianity can be oppressed, it can never be eliminated.

The attempt to drive Christianity out of public life, Cardinal Bagnasco said, is “not a sign of intelligence but of fear.” While accusing Christians of being divisive, he observed, secularists show no tolerance of the faith.